An Associated Press photo of AEW founder Tony Khan on the sidelines of a Jacksonville Jaguars game has turned into a pro wrestling story as it appears the card for next month’s Full Gear can be seen in Khan’s hands.
Scribbled faintly out on notebook paper (enhanced and edited by a Twitter user), the card looks to read as follows:
AEW World Champion Kenny Omega vs. Hangman Page
Jon Moxley vs. Bryan Danielson
The Inner Circle vs. American Top Team
MJF vs. Darby Allin
CM Punk vs. Wardlow
Thunder Rosa vs. Jade Cargill
Adam Cole vs. Christian Cage
The Young Bucks vs. Jurassic Express
Cody Rhodes vs. Malakai Black, Andrade El Idolo or Miro
Tag Team Champions Lucha Bros vs. FTR
Women’s Champion Britt Baker vs. ?
In an interview this week, Khan said that Omega vs. Page was a go for Full Gear, confirming one of the matches. Khan has yet to comment on social media about the gaffe.
While MJF vs. Allin and the Inner Circle/ATT feuds are just getting going, the other big programs have yet to take shape. It’s possible that Moxley vs. Danielson will be the finals of the World title eliminator tournament, the brackets of which will be announced Saturday on Dynamite.
Full Gear is set for the Target Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Saturday, November 13th.
Confirming a rumor that had been floated since mid-September, AEW officially announced that Full Gear will take place at the Target Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Saturday, November 12th.
Fightful had reported last week that many members of the AEW roster were set to appear at November 13th’s The Big Event in New York City, but needed to be rescheduled to the 14th instead. The announcement was essentially a formality given AEW announced the Friday, November 11th Rampage would also be held at the Target Center.
Tickets go on sale this Friday.
The company’s final pay-per-view of 2021 was originally scheduled for St. Louis, Missouri, on November 6th, but due to heavy combat sports competition from both UFC and top boxer Canelo Alvarez, they decided to move the date instead.
However, the Chaifetz Arena at Saint Louis University was booked for the 13th, necessitating the move. AEW will now go two straight weeks with live editions of Rampage as the arena will instead host the Friday, November 5th show.
The location for AEW Full Gear is getting closer to finally becoming confirmed.
As was first mentioned in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter two weeks ago, Fightful reported Monday that according to internal plans within AEW, the November 13th pay-per-view is indeed set for Minneapolis, Minnesota. Dave Meltzer said as of a week ago, holding the event in the Minneapolis/St. Paul region was the working plan.
The venue is still unknown, but the Target Center is available as of now.
Fightful reported that many members of the AEW roster were set to appear at November 13th’s The Big Event in New York City, but needed to be pulled. Instead, they will appear on Sunday, November 14th with AEW going “above and beyond” to make it right to event promoters.
Full Gear was originally scheduled for St. Louis, Missouri, on November 6th, but due to heavy combat sports competition from both UFC and top boxer Canelo Alvarez, AEW decided to move the date instead. The Chaifetz Arena, however, was booked on the new date.
It’s unknown whether Rampage, still set for the Chaifetz Arena the Friday before Full Gear, would still be held there. Again, the Target Center is available.
In this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer said that the rumored location for November’s AEW Full Gear is Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota.
Meltzer said AEW didn’t confirm or deny the location. He also didn’t specify what venue.
AEW had to move the date from November 6th to November 13th due to heavy pay-per-view competition from UFC’s return to Madison Square Garden and a Canelo Alvarez title unification bout. The show was set for the Chaifetz Arena in St. Louis, Missouri, but the venue is booked for the new night.
Meltzer didn’t say whether the Enterprise Center in St. Louis was an option as the 19,000-seat home of the NHL Blues is available. Rampage is also scheduled for that Friday at the Chaifetz Arena.
In either case, Meltzer notes AEW will likely have to pull Jon Moxley from his New Japan Battle of the Valley event from San Jose, California, which is also scheduled for the same night as Full Gear.
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Meltzer noted that of the 200,000+ buys thus far for All Out, streaming numbers (both domestic and international) accounted for 115,000 which was twice the number of last year’s show. He estimated late buys could add another 10-15% to the final number and could be more than usual based on Bryan Danielson’s debut and the buzz about the Tag Team title cage match.
The amount of buys is the largest for a non-WWE PPV since 1999’s WCW Spring Stampede and could be more than the March 1999 Uncensored event when it’s all said and done.
Revenue-wise, he estimated AEW took home just under $5 million in post-partner split PPV revenue, live gate & merchandise, and movie theater buys with the total gross being just under $10 million. That number would be the most since February 1999’s SuperBrawl in Oakland, California, headlined by Ric Flair vs. Hulk Hogan ($14.1 million).
All Out set the company’s live gate record ($700,000 on 9000+ paid tickets) with “The First Dance” edition of Rampage bringing in around 15,000 paid for $635,000. The upcoming show at Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens, New York, will break the gate record.
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Meltzer said that the plans for the discussed “major” rematch in early-2022 between Women’s Champion Britt Baker and Thunder Rosa have ranged from a cage match to a hair vs. hair match to everything in between.
“The idea is to build it to be the biggest women’s match in company history,” he wrote.
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Meltzer said that it’s either going to be AEW or Impact Wrestling for Windham Rotunda, the former Bray Wyatt in WWE. If Wyatt signs, he said there is talk that his debut would be at the September 29th Dynamite in Rochester, New York — the hometown of former Wyatt Family member Brodie Lee.
Bryan Danielson said that no one thing led to his choice to join AEW, but ultimately a desire to physically push his limits was a driving force.
“I hate to say this, but… Vince [McMahon] and I have a great relationship. And I love him, I do. Sometimes he’s overprotective of me. And I want to be able to push my limits,” Danielson said at the post-All Out media scrum. Danielson debuted for AEW in the show-closing segment of All Out.
“That’s one of the things that I love about this, is the physicality of what we do and being able to push my limits.”
Danielson stated that a desire to have a portion of his life be “wild” also contributed to his decision.
“I don’t know how many of you are married or have kids. When you’re married and you have kids, your life becomes a little bit tame. I love it, but it’s a little bit tame,” Danielson said.
“I need one part of my life that’s a little bit wild.”
Danielson also revealed that WWE was going to allow him to do things outside of the company, but did not specifically state if that would have entailed wrestling elsewhere. Perhaps to that end, Danielson expressed a desire to do some work in NJPW and also in Mexico.
“WWE was so gracious to me as far as the offer that they gave me. They were going to let me go do some other stuff outside,” said Danielson. “I really battled back and forth, because there’s a lot of people there that I consider family, that actually are my family, and people that I love there. So, it was a really tough decision.”
Danielson said that there was no one tipping point that led to his decision to leave WWE, but pointed to AEW’s Brodie Lee tribute show as one of the first things that got him thinking of making a move to AEW.
In response to a question about the possibility of his wife Brie Bella joining AEW, Danielson downplayed the possibility.
“That would be very difficult. It was hard for me to go, because I have so many ties within WWE. She’s happy there, she has so many business connections there, so I don’t know,” said Danielson.
Bryan also addressed the possibility of not leading his signature “Yes!” chants, as he wants to make certain that doing so would not in any way be a snub to WWE.
I respect the people that I have worked for before and their intellectual property,” Danielson said. “The fans doing it is great, but I’m not sure if I’m going to do it. ”
That’s how Adam Cole described his choice to join AEW as he spoke to the media at the post-All Out scrum. Cole debuted in the closing segment of the All Out pay-per-view.
Cole said that working in WWE had been his dream since he was a child, but that the passion of the AEW crew and fans helped make his choice to leave and join AEW.
“When you think about where I was, that was my dream since I was nine years old,” said Cole. “…But I knew in my heart pretty early on that I wanted to come here [to AEW].”
“It was no knock whatsoever on them [WWE]. I had a very excellent four-year experience. But I wanted to come back and work with a crew who I love being around 24/7, a crew that is just as passionate about pro wrestling as I am, and fans that feel the exact same way that we do.”
According to Cole, he was not anticipating to be a free agent until December.
But circumstances were different than both Cole and his former wrestling home anticipated, as Cole’s contract actually came due in June. Cole revealed the details of his WWE deal and how his new agreement with AEW came together very quickly.
“I was under the impression that it was six months later,” said Cole. It was a surprise to me, it was a surprise to them [WWE]. All of a sudden I went from thinking December was when I was going to start talking about a new contract, to all of a sudden we were talking about in three days.”
Cole confirmed reports that he signed a short-term extension of his WWE deal to finish up his NXT angle with Kyle O’Reilly, who he called “one of my best friends in the entire world.”
Cole also confirmed that he met with Vince McMahon prior to leaving WWE. He described McMahon as “intimidating,” but said that their meeting was positive.
“The talk went great,” said Cole. “We had a really, really good conversation about a lot of different things. The actual conversation itself was awesome. I had no bad experience with him whatsoever.”
“He is an intimidating man. He definitely commands respect in a lot of ways, but the experience itself was totally fine.”
Cole also addressed the future of his Twitch channel. In response to a question about knowing he won’t have to give up his channel as he presumably would have had he stayed with WWE, Cole confirmed that it was important to him.
“It’s incredibly important to me,” said Cole. “Twitch was sort of something I started over the pandemic and wanted to do for a long time, but hadn’t really taken the time to teach myself.”
“Initially, I really did do it just because I really like video games…” “But then what started from the Twitch stream was this community of people that would all come together and literally share that passion over video games,” Cole said.
“I have gotten so many messages from people who are going through a really, really rough time, and the only thing they looked forward to at that time were those streams. I feel a connection with a lot of these people. I know a lot of them by name. Social media can be a really nasty place sometimes, and there is not of that in the Twitch streams.”
“So I adore doing that, I’m so happy that I’m still doing it. I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon.”
CM Punk believes that this moment in wrestling history is bigger than the WCW vs. WWF Monday Night War of the 1990s.
“I’m not Hogan, I’m not Savage, Daniel Bryan and Adam Cole, they’re not The Outsiders. I see the parallels. This is totally different. And I’ll go ahead and say it, people can quote me, they’ll be pissed off about it, to me, this is bigger,” said Punk.
Punk made the statement during the post-All Out media scrum at Now Arena.
He was quick to point out, though, that his focus is not on any outside force as competition to AEW, and that his and the company’s primary objectives are engaging and pleasing their own fans.
“I’m not personally in the business of a war or competing. I know who competition is and competition isn’t,” said Punk.
“To me, we focus on ourselves, focus on the talent we have, and we focus on the people in the building. And I think that’s how we grow,” Punk said. “It’s not about throwing stones.”
Punk did allude to WWE, though never mentioned the company by name.
“I know TNT loves ratings, I know that everybody’s going to look at stuff and compare the two. For a company that’s only been around for two years, I think they’re doing great. And if you’re competing with somebody on another night that’s got a 30-year head start, well that’s fine,” said Punk.
“To me, our competition is our audience. And as long as we keep them engaged and keep them happy, then that’s what we’re doing.”
AEW Full Gear is moving dates as the company’s final pay-per-view of the year will now be held on Saturday, November 13th instead of Saturday, November 6th.
The news was announced during All Out.
However, the location is unknown as there’s an event already booked on the 13th in the Chaifetz Arena in St. Louis, Missouri.
AEW is currently still scheduled for a Rampage event on Friday, November 5th in the same building, but no announcement was made as to a date change for that event.
Since the original Full Gear date was announced, two major combat sports events were scheduled for November 6th: UFC 268 from Madison Square Garden and a Canelo Alvarez vs. Caleb Plant boxing PPV.
Full Gear 2021 will be the third in the event’s chronology. The 2019 edition was held in Baltimore and headlined by a Kenny Omega vs. Jon Moxley lights out match and Chris Jericho defending the AEW World title against Cody Rhodes in the semi-main event.
Full Gear 2020 was held in Jacksonville at Daily’s Place. Moxley defending the AEW title against Eddie Kingston in an I Quit match headlined while Jericho faced MJF in the semi-main event.
